There's me thinking he'd gone to Rome to report on Anglicanism to the Pope - oh he has, in part.

http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/05/row-meets-benny.html

Sorry but the image in my mind is that Rowan Williams has gone to Rome to learn about how to hold a trowel for the construction of aqueducts and viaducts.

Add this:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000273.shtml

The Vatican has said that the time has come for the Anglican Church to choose between Protestantism and the ancient churches of Rome and Orthodoxy. Speaking on the day that the Archbishop of Canterbury met Benedict XVI in Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity, said it was time for Anglicanism to "clarify its identity".

"Does it belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox - or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century? At the moment it is somewhere in between, . . ."

That IS our identity. And, a mighty good one, too. I came to the TEC from the Roman Church. I don't want to go back. I found a home in the TEC - the service and beliefs were familiar. But, oh what a joy to me to have a woman priest. To be part of a Church in which woman were full and equal members. It lifted my soul. I pray that soon our Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters throughout the Anglican Communion will find that same joy.

We have already chosen. Are we Protestants or Catholics? Yes.

The fact that this kindly prelate cannot wrap his head around it is irrelevant.

Surely Cardinal Kasper's remarks are untypically arrogant? Surely the greatness of Anglicanism lies in its reconciliation of the Reformation and Catholic traditions? And Akinola et al. represent the most Protestant side of Anglicanism, the extreme Evangelical side -- they certainly would be no allies in a shove of Anglicanism toward Rome.

The sectarianism of my fellow Roman Catholics never ceases to appal me.

Ruth Gledhill is spot on. Although Cardinal Kasper no doubt meant well, he does illustrate a lack of understanding of the nature of Anglicanism.
Anglicanism doesn't decide anything or "clarify its identity" and neither does Catholicism.
If for nothing else, the Anglicans serve to remind us to pray for (re-)union with the Orthodox -- because it won't happen just because it is time to decide, which surely it always is.

The sad reality for Cardinal Kaspar is that the real movers against homosexuality in the Anglican Commnion are evangelivcals who are equally opposed to Rome.

With 17 women bishops at Lambeth..he needs to be challenged is RC dialogue with the Communion or primarily with the C of E.

You've seen Archbishop Rowan backpeddle as fast as possible on dealing with gay churchpeople in a sane and just way: now just watch him do the same on women in the church.

Have we got to wait until the whole older generation of backward-looking sexist homophobes who currently dominate the C of E have actually died off before it can start to be an institution with any credibility?

"is RC dialogue with the Communion or primarily with the C of E."

Bang on the money, RIW.

The RC Church must be very challenged in dialogue with the Anglican Communion because of its democratic and pluralistic polity as a communion of (in some sense) autonomous churches. Centuries of ultramontanism have stamped out anything approaching such a polity in the RC Church, and the timid openings of Vatican II have been stamped out as well (the appointment of bishops is more centralized than ever and the authority and status of episcopal conferences has been drastically undercut since 1968; the Roman episcopal synods issue in papal documents that frequently eliminate the aspects of episcopal opinion unacceptable to Rome and substitute papal opinion for them instead).